When boiling pieces of meat or chicken, to make a soup, gravy, or a consommé, fat from the animal floats to the surface. For health and culinary reasons, this fat needs to be skimmed off. Removing the fat by means of a spoon or ladle is difficult and inefficient, resulting in some fat remaining in the soup and much of the soup being wasted. Special fat-separating jugs exist, but these involve a messy transfer of the liquids from the cooking vessel into the jug.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,024,057 there are disclosed a device for removing liquid grease from solutions, such as soups and broths, and a method for using the device. The grease removing device includes a flat plate having a multiplicity of projections on its underside. A container for holding coolant and a handle are also provided. In use, the plate is cooled to a temperature lower than the freezing point of the grease; the underside of the plate is then brought into contact with the floating grease; and the plate with the attached solidified grease is then removed from the solution.
Because of the poor thermal conductivity of the fat, once a thin layer has congealed on the plate its efficiency is severely reduced. It is not therefore usually possible to remove all the fat in one operation. Instead, it is necessary to remove the fat adhering to the underside of the plate and to repeat the operation several times. For this reason, it is important to be able to remove the fat from the underside of the plate quickly and easily.